"He made no secret that he owed his recent knowledge largely to Farmer Maggot, whom he seemed to regard as a person of more importance than they had imagined"

― The House of Tom Bombadil, The Fellowship of the Ring

Tom even travels down the Withywindle to visit the Farmer and his family, singing and dancing late into the night. There was also a mock-scholarly introduction, in which Tolkien notes that not only did the Bucklandhobbits compose poetry about Tom Bombadil, "they probably gave him this name (it is Bucklandish in form) to add to his many older ones." But, he writes, "they had as little understanding of his powers as the Shire-folk had of Gandalf's: both were regarded as benevolent persons, mysterious maybe and unpredictable but nonetheless comic."[2]